Lila, age 12: “if not us, then who?” Words to live by.

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One of the biggest changes in our family’s life this year has been the arrival of Tillie Billie Eilish — our rescue Beagle-Red Heeler mix.

Before she was first homed in Willis, Texas, about an hour north of us, she must have been abused. Men, in particular, are loathsome to her — me included.

The passing of our dog Rusty left such a big hole in our home and our hearts. It’s been tough for me not to be able to develop a relationship with her. The only person in the house she plays with is Lila Jane, our 12-year-old. She sleeps every night in Lila’s bed.

When I complained about how reserved she is around me, Lila gently nudged: Daddy, look at it this way. You’re the man she likes more than any other!

When she saw how disappointed I am not to be one of Tillie’s persons, she looked up at me with those beautiful brown eyes.

Daddy, she said, think about it this way: who else, besides our family, would be patient enough to help her? If we don’t do it, who else would? We have to take care of her!

Little did our Lila Jane know that she was quoting Hillel the Elder. If not now, then when?

She was also quoting the late congressman John Lewis. If not us, then who?

In a world where kindness and personal responsibility seem to be in short supply, 12-year-old Lila spoke like the sages of antiquity, like a leader of the civil rights movement.

Reading the awful daily news, I keep going back to what Lila said. We surely could use more of that today. Every morning when I sit down at the keyboard, I’m going to ask myself, If not us, then who? If not now, then when? At our house, they are words to live by.

The Pope and the President.

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The early Italian medieval writer Petrarch — the first humanist — had a lifelong quest that was never truly fulfilled. He wanted the Papacy to return to Rome from its “Babylonian Exile” in France. Like his de facto predecessor, the early Italian poet Dante, he believed the Pope should be concerned only with spiritual matters.

Even after the Papacy returned to Rome in 1377, it remained a political and military power. The Vatican oversaw the Papal State in Italy, including four major regions on the Italic peninsula. It wasn’t until 1870, when the nascent monarchic Italian state defeated the Vatican’s forces and took control of Rome, that the Vatican’s forces stood down once and for all.

But that didn’t stop the Vatican from being an aggressively active political power.

It was stunning to hear the vice president of the U.S. arrogantly advise the Pope that he should stay in his own lane. In one widely cited quote, he essentially tells the Pope that he is a liar (his statements should be “anchored in truth,” the VP admonished!).

As a convert to Catholicism, he should be finely aware of the Catholic Church’s history and its role in shaping world events. Ever since the 4th-century “Donation of Constantine” (look it up), leading thinkers have argued that the Papacy should limit itself to spirituality while others have lobbied for it to remain temporal (earthly) in its scope.

But the fact of the matter is that the Vatican has always been politically focused.

The only thing more stunning is hearing Trump-supporting Catholics complain this week about Trump’s blasphemous comments and imperatives. Where were those same Christians when Trump mocked a disabled journalist, when he denigrated a U.S. war hero and senator, when he scolded a TV anchor for having “blood coming out of her wherever”?

Are they finally getting the message that Trump won’t know Jesus until he finally meets him after his death? After all that’s happened, how can they even call Vance a Catholic and Trump a Christian?

I’m sticking with the Pope’s message to the world: “G-d’s heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice, and lies.” Nothing political about that!

Image via the Catholic Church England and Wales Flickr.

HSPVA-bound! Congratulations Georgia!

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Ever since the girls entered the Suzuki strings music program at Parker Elementary, we have been dreaming that one day they would attend Houston’s Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, one of the top performing arts schools in the country.

It’s been a long and winding road since Georgia first picked up her violin (and later switched to viola), paved with honest hard work and genuine sacrifice.

Yesterday we learned that she has been accepted into the conservatory program there. Tears are welling in my eyes as I write this.

Congratulations, Georgia! Beautiful child, brainy teen, “old soul” (as so many people call you), you are a dream come true. You are my dream come true.

Not long before she died, my mother wondered out loud if she should have supported me more in my own music journey.

“Watching all you do for the girls’ music,” she said, “it makes me think I should have done that for you.” I really didn’t know what to say. “But you did all right without me,” she added.

Because of the tragedies unfolding in our lives during my teenage years, Judy didn’t have the bandwidth or energy to take interest in my creative or academic life. I was on my own. But I did “alright,” as she told me that day not so long ago.

Watching Georgia thrive and achieve a highest of heights feels like an empty space in my soul is finally being filled up with joy and promise. Had Georgia pursued a different field or path I would be just as happy. But that she’s doing music… wow… man… The dreams deferred (who gets the reference?) are making way for a soul fulfilled.

Congratulations wonderful Georgia! Mommy and I couldn’t be more proud, more happy, and more excited for your bright future! We love you! We love you!

Israel’s new death penalty is racist and inhumane.

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As the world holds it breath and Trump threatens to rain Armageddon on Iran at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (set your dials!), the U.S. media have only obliquely reported Israel’s new death penalty, passed into law last week.

Here’s what the Times had to say:

“Israel’s Parliament passed a law on Monday that would allow the hanging of Palestinians convicted of deadly militant attacks, but experts say it almost certainly cannot be applied to Jewish extremists convicted of similar crimes. The law is a victory for Israel’s far right and reflects the country’s shift to a harder line against Palestinians.”

“The legislation makes death by hanging the default sentence in Israeli military courts for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks. Israeli citizens — both Jewish and Palestinian Arab — could also face the death penalty for killings intended to ‘negate the existence of the State of Israel.’ Experts say, however, the chances that it would be applied to Jewish Israelis for attacks against Palestinians are minimal.”

In other words, Jewish West Bank settlers won’t be held accountable for murdering Palestinians because their acts aren’t a negation of the existence of the State of Israel.

“Before the law passed, Britain, France, Italy and Germany urged [Israeli] lawmakers not to enact it.”

The executions will be carried out by hanging because the Israeli medical establishment has refused to participate with death by lethal injection. The executions will have to be completed within 180 days. The time limit will make it even harder for death row inmates to appeal their conviction.

This is the country that the U.S. has followed blindly into the most consequential war of our times. Don’t forget to set that dial to 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time!

I’m a Jew and I have loved Israel over the course of my life. I visited the country in 2000, not long before the second Intifada began, and I saw how Palestinians already lived in an apartheid state. But I still felt the call of a Jewish homeland, despite its deep-running flaws.

The genocide in Gaza is a crime against humanity. The occupation of southern Lebanon is sure to bring about yet another humanitarian crisis. The war in Iran is threatening the stability of the world (not protecting Americans). And the new racist and inhumane death penalty reveals that Israel can be considered nothing less than a full-blown apartheid state.

How I finally found the family where I belong. (And they’re all coming over for Passover tonight!)

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One of the wildest stories of my crazy life is how I finally found the family where I belong.

Not long after I moved to Austin to be with Tracie (good move!), a man named Marty Levy started calling me from Houston. I knew who he was — my father’s first cousin. Beyond that, he and his family were strangers to me. That’s because he and my father stopped speaking in the early 1980s when I was a teenager.

As it turns out, Marty and his family like fine dining. Before long, I was commuting to Houston every week for one of the best gigs that I’ve ever had. It was thanks to Marty, a personal friend of Tony Vallone, that I began working with the legendary Texas restaurant Tony’s. The job and the Levys are why we moved here to Houston, a city that I love.

Over the years, the Levy and (Texas) Parzen families have shared countless meals and holidays. We have a lot in common (music, food, wine, academia) and we genuinely love hanging out and caring for one another.

Let’s face it: my San Diego family has never liked me. I used to be close to my older brother. That ended when he became a lawyer more than 30 years ago. My little brother and his wife have shunned me since college. In the run-up to our mother’s death, they seemed to want to have a relationship. But it ultimately emerged that they wanted me to side with them against my older brother. Nice, right? No dice.

Why is my original nuclear family so messed up? I attribute the fracture to the black cloud that has followed us in the wake of horrific crimes committed by our father. It’s not easy to love your own family, I guess, when your dad is featured in the local paper for being a prolific asshole.

Tonight the Levys are coming over for Passover. There will be nearly 20 of us breaking matzos together. It’s a miracle. I came to Texas for Tracie. But Texas gave me the family that loves me. Man, I’m one lucky son of a gun to have escaped the misery of Parzen family California. Gut Yontif! Happy Passover! I’m finally home.

To dream the impossible dream: Talarico for Texas.

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One of the most compelling speeches I’ve ever heard in my life was devoted not to the politics of nation but the politics of wine.

Back when the debate over Brunello di Montalcino was raging (in the wake of Brunellogate, where Brunello bottlers were caught adding unauthorized grapes to their wines, giving them an unfair and illegal market advantage), the appellation held a controversial and closely followed referendum: should Brunello be made with 100 percent Sangiovese grapes, the historic local variety, as tradition encouraged and law required? or should bottlers be allowed to add “international” grapes like Merlot, ostensibly making their wines more market-ready?

It was the legendary Barolo grower, Teobaldo Cappellano, who blew me away with his contribution to a debate streamed over the internets. He was for keeping Brunello the traditional monovarietal wine (just Sangiovese, as it had been made at least since the 1960s).

“Sometimes the battles most worth fighting are the ones you know you are going to lose,” said Baldo as he was known. To dream the impossible dream, as it were.

I’ve lived in Texas for nearly two decades. I can’t remember a year when democratic pundits didn’t claim that “this is the year we are going to turn Texas blue,” or at least “purple.” Rubber tree plants aside, it still hasn’t happened.

That won’t stop our family for believing in and block-walking for Talarico for Texas. Politically and electorally, our state remains Republican dominant. But that doesn’t mean that nearly half of our state’s residents are people like Tracie and me.

For the record here’s the opening of Talarico’s mission statement:

“Our economy is broken. Our politics are broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken. That’s because the most powerful people in the world want it that way. The biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom. Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them.”

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To be better far than you are
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far

No matter whom you support, please vote this November 3.

WWIII is here and children are dying. We must save the children.

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When I first moved to Texas to be with Tracie, her father was still working as the pastor of a modest church in Orange where Tracie was born and grew up — a small Texas town straight out of central casting. I began helping out with the church website and we attended services regularly.

I’ll never forget Randy leading a prayer for “enemy combatants” (Obama was president and there were troop surges in Afghanistan and Iraq during those years). I’m not a Christian. I’m a Jew. But I was profoundly inspired by his prayers. This, I thought to myself, is what true Christianity is about: knowing, first and foremost, that all people are the children of G-d. Even enemy combatants.

Today, children of G-d are dying every day in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Israel, and Ukraine. Lives of honest, earnest young people are being destroyed for wars over weapons and oil: who gets to keep the weapons and who gets to keep the oil.

World War III is here. In Ukraine, it’s Russia vs. the West. In the Middle East, it is the U.S. and Israel who havelaunched a war of aggression on Iran, a conflict that has drawn in multiple countries in the region and beyond. The crusades of all actors are deeply intertwined.

The current American president campaigned on — let me see if I can get this right! — immigration, the economy, and world peace. When it comes to the first issue, he has delivered what he promised. I vehemently disagree with the policy and the tactics. But he has partially achieved what he set out to do. Fair enough.

But when it comes to the economy and world peace, we are clearly moving in the opposite direction from his stated goals.

Now, as always, is a time to pray for vulnerable children. But it’s also time to stand up and speak out: the war on Iran is wrong! It’s being driven by the interests of the powerful. Children — innocent children — are paying the price for the imperial aspirations of world leaders in their 70s.

There are so many things I’d like to be writing about here. But I can’t scribble another word until I say this. War is wrong. Children are dying. Stop the wars now! G-d bless the children. G-d bless us all.

Friuli could lose one of its most iconic vineyards as local government repairs landslide damage.

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vineyard friuli italyTwo persons perished and nearly 100 people were displaced from their homes when a landslide ravaged the village of Brazzano in Friuli in northeastern Italy last November. The catastrophe was brought on by torrential rains: a mudslide tore through the hamlet, which lies in the heart of Friuli’s Collio wine appellation.

Now, it seems that one of the region’s most iconic vineyards will also fall victim to the tragedy.

The Borgo del Tiglio winery’s famous Ronco della Chiesa (Church Hill) vineyard is currently slated to be razed in efforts to make the area safe for human habitation. That’s an image of the vineyard before the rains ripped through the town. It was shared with me by Mattia Manferrari, son of legacy grape grower Nicola Manferrari whose family has managed the site for generations. Over the decades since World War II, this parcel has produced what are considered to be some of Italy’s best white wines, known for terroir-driven character and longevity in the cellar (I’ve drunk Borgo del Tiglio stretching back to the 1990s, stunning wines that reflect lifetimes of care and maniacal passion in the vineyard).

You can read about the “tragedy at Borgo del Tiglio” and see images of the devastation on Kevin Day’s blog Opening a Bottle. A number of high-profile wine writers wrote about the disaster late last year.

Today, the Manferrari family is facing nothing short of an existential threat to their identity as grape growers.

Nicola has mounted a letter-writing campaign to the president of the region of Friuli, Massimiliano Fedriga (he can be reached at presidente@regione.fvg.it). Friends of the estate have been asking wine writers and industry observers to urge the local government to find a solution that won’t require destruction of the historic growing site.

They have asked me to share their story here. Their hope is that visibility in one of Italy’s most important wine markets will help to illustrate the urgency of their request to local officials. If so inclined, please share and please write to president Fedriga. Thank you.

What was it like to live in New York City in the 1990s?

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After I filed my dissertation at U.C.L.A. in 1997, there was no doubt in my mind that my next move was going to be to New York City.

In October of the same year when Comet Hale-Bopp passed by our planet and Hong Kong was given back to the People’s Republic of China, I rented a U-Haul truck and drove across country with all of my possessions and my cat, Bibiche.

I landed in Brooklyn where a family friend snagged me the last good deal on a Brownstone floor through in Park Slope (the landlord was offering it at $800 per month and my friend offered $1,000 to seal the deal; that’s how competitive it was, even before the Park Slope revival).

A headhunter had found me a job at an Italian rolling stock company in Midtown. Yes, rolling stock — trains. I was hired as a “marketing specialist” purely because I was bi-lingual.

Six months later, I had found my new calling as an editor at the newly launched English-language version of La Cucina Italiana, the historic gastronomy magazine.

It was the worst time and the best time. I’ll never forget the indignities of the morning schlepp into Manhattan every day. Freezing cold, sweltering hot — you walked every day to the D train with a million other schlubs trying to make their way, just like me. I was barely making enough to pay my rent. But I knew I had stumbled on to something good. My boss was such an asshole, an abusive manager who ended up being sued for sexual harassment. But I just kept my nose to the ground and made the most of it. That was the first year of my career as a food and wine writer.

By 1999 I was playing music in all the cool clubs on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn. So many incredible bands got their start during that time. I believe a lot of folks would agree that it was the last great era of indy rock in lower Manhattan.

It was an incredible time to be in the city. Babbo opened in 1998 and the Italian food and wine renaissance was just beginning to take shape.

To be continued…

“We’re cooked.” A 12-year-old’s take on the world wars.

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“At least we’re not invading North Korea.”

That’s what our 12-year-old daughter said wryly we watched the evening news yesterday. The president of the U.S. had just said that the U.S. plans to take control of Cuba.

“I think I can do anything I want with it,” said the leader of the (no longer) free world as we watched.

Either way, said our daughter, “we’re cooked.”

Tracie and I struggle with how to talk to our girls about the world wars that unfold nightly on television. We feel strongly that they need to be engaged with world events. They will be exposed to the news, our thinking goes, no matter what we do. But we can help them deal with their feelings by guiding them through nuanced issues they may not understand. Giving them the opportunity to articulate their emotions is the key to their better health, we believe.

But how do you talk to your 12- and 14-year-olds when you can’t contain your weeping at the sight of children dying every day?

Here in America, it can be easy to tune out the wars. In other parts of the world, from what we can see, that’s not the case.

I have an Italian friend, a woman roughly my age, who posts updates on the number of children killed in Iran and Gaza nearly every day. She has kids not much older than ours. As hard as it is to see each night, I try to check in with her feed regularly. We mustn’t ever forget, I say to myself over and over, that children are dying every day in imperial wars driven by petroleum and humans’ will to power.

“All things are subject to interpretation,” wrote Nietzsche. “Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” The philosopher’s (in)famous aphorism seems more relevant than ever, especially in the age and rage of social media.

We teach our children to look beyond the projections of power, to seek truth, however ethereal it may be.

Our truth? We must stop these wars before more children die. G-d bless the children.

Image: “Boy seated in wreckage of building after a bombing raid of London during World War II,” Library of Congress, 1945.